


Shadow Ascending

by Nyxrinne



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Diary/Journal, Family, Gen, Hallucinations, Isolation, POV Female Character, Supernatural Elements, Wrath of the Lich King
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1285366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxrinne/pseuds/Nyxrinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out in the isolated woods of Northrend, a Forsaken shadowpriest fights to provide for her two dependent daughters: the one she kept alive, and the one who will never grow again. But soon the visions begin, and bring with them the sordid history she'd hoped to leave behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Dear diary._

Today I took my first step outside in three weeks and four days. It is so bitterly cold here that I breathed out the warm cabin air as mist for the first few exhales, before the chill slipped down past my gullet and cooled me completely.

In submission to some unnecessary human instinct, I wore wool, leather and fur. The layers creaked as I walked a slow patrol around our hut, with a stick in hand to break down the icicles hanging from the outermost roof slates and to coax down the vast drifts of snow before the roof itself could fall in. My girls followed my progress through the windows, peeling back the felt curtains to watch through the icy glass.

I admit my perfectionist tendencies were today nothing more than a ruse. I wasn’t especially concerned about the last patches of snow. I was dawdling. Everything here is so vast: the pine trees, the sweeping hills, and the sky overhead. When I could procrastinate no-longer I stood under the eaves and looked out, and that was all I could see: nature, on an impossible scale.

I came back inside. I can’t trust myself to bear it.


	2. Chapter 2

_Four weeks and two days ago, Gunther Arcanus delivered my girls to me._

He was remarkably prompt, for a Dalaran mage with a fondness for Dalaran pipe weed, but I assume he’d been looking forward to the end of his babysitting duties for some time.

Not half an hour after I’d sent my psychic summons, they appeared in a burst of arcane sparks and coloured smoke atop the snow. Rail-thin Arcanus stood stork-like in the middle, seven-year-old Holly with her eyes burning yellow at his left, four-year-old Praelia standing sleepily at his right, her Living eyes drooping shut.

She woke quickly at the sight of me and raced forward and to throw her arms around my legs. I saw for the first time just how much she’s grow in my absence. Her baby fat is much diminished, her limbs are longer, and her hair has grown all the way to her shoulders, white-blond and curling at the ends.

She is solid proof of the passage of time. Alone, with my undead body unchanging in the cold, I had lost my way through the days. Now I have a visual reminder of how many weeks have passed straight through me.

Holly’s only gesture was to slip her hand through mine and stand silently at my side. She showed the cabin at my back no interest; she ignored her sister’s attempts to initiate a group hug; she subjected Arcanus to a blank and uncaring stare that he made no move to return. Instead, he looked at me.

‘Where have you been, Miriah?’

That looks accusatory on the page, but there was nothing but concern in his tone. It’s a rare thing for one of my people to speak softly, but he did. The arctic wind plucked at the brim of his wizard’s hat and lifted it up. Beneath, his withered features were sincere, but I’d been silent for so long that I couldn’t think of what to say.

‘I’d started to think you’d been done in like the others,’ he told me.

My mind stayed blank; my tongue wouldn’t stir. It was baffling. I’d had to speak to summon him. How long had it taken me then to decide what to say? I hadn’t a clue. Time had slipped out of my grasp completely.

‘I’ve a house,’ I said eventually, but his brow was already in full crease. His burning Forsaken gaze gave the timber hut only a precursory glance.

‘That’s no house. It’s a peasant’s shack. Come back with me.’

I shook my head.

‘You’ll be so isolated,’ he said. Then, gravely: ‘I take it that’s why you’re here.’

A nod. I became aware of Praelia, who rested on my hip, peering curiously at my face. She reached up and touched my mouth. ‘No words?’

No words. I couldn’t express anything important when I had the chance to speak to Arcanus, so I suppose it doesn’t matter that I failed to give him even the empty basics. I managed to thank him and to tell him that I would be fine – that the isolation is nothing, truly. I have my two girls. Somehow they, and the four walls I built with stolen lumber, will fend off the emptiness and help me to heal.


	3. Chapter 3

_Two days from my last entry, seven days from the first, we ran out of food._

I had no choice but to venture outside. Again I piled on the useless layers: linen, wool, leather. As I pulled on my boots I found myself looking over at the girls, curled up in the blankets as it was still early in the morning. 

I wanted to wake them, bundle them up in the hide coats I had sewn for them, and take them with me. Not to show them their new home, not to teach them about the plants here, not to provide any benefit for them. I wanted them with me out of fear for myself, out alone in the wilderness again. I wanted to use them as a shield. 

As soon as I recognised my own motive, I felt a surge of indignation. It might have been aimed inwardly, but it was strong and bright against the mental monochrome I’ve been labouring through. It was enough to usurp the spineless coward squatting in my head. 

I set out at a brisk pace just as first light was setting in to the east. Pine needles and snow, frozen overnight, crackled underfoot, but it was otherwise quiet: the air was still, save for the occasional stirring of an icy breeze, too meagre to rattle the frost-laden branches overhead. 

I was not misled by the silence. Life was all around me. I could sense it in the early morning shadows: foraging creatures skittering about in hollow logs and under fermenting piles of bark and dead foliage; a few departing owls sweeping low overhead; and a herd of deer waking nearby. 

I drew the Shadow close around me, a defensive cloak to convince any mind I came across that I was unworthy of attention. Slowly, carefully, I crept past each one. The land sloped to the south and I followed it down, where the bulk of Grizzlemaw kept the rising sun at bay and the darkness prevalent. 

Grizzlemaw is the broken stump of a fallen tree, a tree so huge I believe it could rival the likes of Teldrassil. The trunk sinks deep into the loam at one end, protruding like a wooden cliff face at the other. The stump has been hollowed out deep down into its roots. That may be the result of whatever blow sundered the tree in the first place, but it seems just as likely that it’s down to the whole city of furbolg who live within it. 

Theirs were some of the first minds I encountered here, sapient but tending toward basic, bestial lines of logic. As far as I can tell, they’ve dedicated themselves to some sort of bear spirit, and cultivation of the tree is supposed to help that spirit in some way. 

More importantly, they are well-established here, and have extensive food stores. The possibility of plundering those was what drew me to Grizzlemaw. 

Approaching through the shadows, I scaled the outer wall. The bark is twisted and knotted; perfect for climbing. Inside, the ridges of wood are more uniform, but pronounced enough that I was able to half-slide, half-climb down amongst the furbolg huts. Inside Grizzlemaw there’s a broad, sloping ledge that follows the curve of the retaining wall, and the huts sit upon this. 

I think they may actually be porches over front doors, but the furbolg sleep up against them anyway, with canopies of woven plant fibre overhead. Most are covered with moss, too. Additional protection against the falling snow, I suppose. 

Regardless, the sound of so many creatures breathing long and deep, snuffling occasionally and shifting in their sleep, gave me pause. After the silence outside, with life evident only through my mind-sensing spells, it inspired the passing thought that the tree itself was alive and breathing through the furbolg. 

I did not find it a peaceful thought. I’m Forsaken. The Living are my foes. I wove my deflecting spell more tightly around me and fell back on some regulated breathing myself, just to divert my attention from the thought that they might wake up. Any pang of discomfort could easily develop into panic after so long hidden away and alone. 

Above me, the jagged walls of the stump encircled a disc of sky beginning to lighten. I picked my way between two sleeping bodies and started down the spiralling path, pausing to gather the pine nuts they’d stored in shelves carved into the wall. 

Toward the bottom the huts and the pine nuts began to taper out, until only the path remained. That, too, flattened and disappeared beneath soil and greenery. The furbolg had cultivated a garden of sorts there at the bottom, with grass and clover, tiny flowers, a shallow pond and a mound of compost at the very centre. A single sapling sprouted from it, tall and slender, splitting into tiny shoots toward the top. 

There was something malignant about it. Repellent. As a mind-mage I have learned not to ignore what others might dismiss as nothing more than an imagined ‘bad feeling’. More often than not, it’s prescience. I approached the tree cautiously, fumbling with my coat until I tugged off my mittens to dip my hand into my robe pocket. 

I had extracted the broken glass of a shattered test tube a few weeks before, but the rest of my supplies remained: metal tongs, a sheathed, narrow knife, and several squares of linen. With the knife I took two cuttings, and I wrapped them in cloth. There was no food to be found in the garden and the furbolg were beginning to stir up above, so I retreated back up the slope after that, although I took note of a tunnel going deeper that I may return to check. It seems like a sensible place to keep further stores, underground. 

The cuttings I brought with me in my pocket. One is for testing, because if the tree has some sort of dark power to it, I would be a fool to let that slip through my fingers. The second I intend to pin to the door. If it is repellent to me, it may well ward off visitors too. Friend or foe, I’ve no interest in outside contact for now. But I note my trip outside has lifted some of the fog from my mind already. Perhaps overcoming challenges is key. 


	4. Chapter 4

_Three days from my last entry, ten days from the first._

Just a note regarding my examination of the shoots from Grizzlemaw. The plant is most certainly corrupt. The internal fibres are a gnarled tangle, the sort I might expect to see in an elderly tree. The sap is viscous and dark. 

I do not believe this is the result of chemical intervention. I have tested for traces of numerous poisons and typical contaminants. Each test returned a negative. 

This isn’t simple arcane corruption either. I’m reminded of the Scourge metal we examined in Dragonblight, at the foot of Icecrown’s fortifications. Our research there suggested, but never confirmed, that the changes stemmed from power transmedeis: energy that crosses between the magic schools as we have defined them. 

Either Northrend is a font of boundary-breaking energies, or my tree samples have kinship with saronite. I could not have hoped for a more perfect find.


	5. Chapter 5

_Two days from my last entry, twelve from the first._

It has been proven to me by my girls that cabin fever is most certainly a real thing, and that ‘bouncing off the walls’ is not hyperbole. While I have been conducting my experiments, they have been breaking things. Not intentionally, you understand, but because they have this constant need to discharge energy.

They bound through the narrow gaps between bed and table, table and walls, and their shoulders bump the chair, and the chair slowly creeps closer with each lap they make until it bumps the table, and the contents of the table slowly creep until they’re on the floor in pieces.

Lessons are exercises in futility when the children are like this. They can’t focus long enough to read, or even to sit still. They’re forever jumping up to paw at the windows or at my skirts.

This doesn’t annoy me, although it is extremely disruptive, so much as it shames me. It’s impossible to pretend that I’m not imprisoning them in this tiny wooden box when they are so obviously bored.

I’d go so far as to say that Praelia’s health is suffering for it: she no-longer sleeps through, and when she does doze off she quickly slips into dreams that leave her restless and uncharacteristically irritable come morning.

So we are outside today. I have marked out a section of land in which I can see the girls at all times while I sit and work on the front porch, but I haven’t really been working. I’m still anxious, too much so to carry a coherent line of investigative thought. It’s taken me nearly an hour just to write this entry, in fact, simply because I have to scan the perimeter after every other word I pen.

Lia and Holly have no understanding of danger. They love the mountains and the woods; they want to visit everything they can see, from the snowy peaks to the darkest gullies. They race about oblivious to the beasts that might be lurking in the blind spots behind the trees. They lie on their backs on the grass and gaze up at the open heavens with nothing but awe.

I look to the south, where the sky is at its most expansive between the mountains and the treetops, and for a moment I don’t see clear blue but a green haze, followed by the red-gold glow of searing dragonfire. My skeletal left hand prickles, like the flesh is there again.

It’s as though all I can write about now is fear.

It is later in the day, now, and already dark. I write by the last light of the fire, so I will be brief.

I called the girls in when dinner was ready and the sun had just struck the horizon on its descent. Lia reached me first and tried to push past with her mud-laden boots on. I turned from the door to catch her shoulder and oversee the tidy removal of her footwear.

When I looked back, Holly was standing on the chair I had dragged outside to work from. In her hand she held the Grizzlemaw clipping. She rolled it slowly between her fingers, her brown brows folded low.

‘Miriah, is it ours?’ she asked as I drew nearer.

‘It’s a part of the forest,’ I told her. ‘I found it and brought it here.’

‘Why?’

‘You don’t like it?’

I had yet to confirm that anyone other than me felt the same revulsion around the thing; I found myself watching her with baited breath. She gave me a serious look.

‘No.’

‘Why not? What do you think of it?’

‘I don’t like it,’ was all Holly would say. Her expression turned to sullen pout. ‘Why do you keep bad things?’

I told her that it would drive off evil, but her words are with me still. I do keep bad things: endless bad memories all kept close to my heart. Is that the source of the fear? Nature is meant to be a person’s last and unfaltering reprieve. Maybe I’m just afraid of those memories, echoing back to me from every wall of silence.


End file.
